Aromatic Herb Harvesters

The Bonino range of aromatic herb harvesters includes machines all custom made and designed to cut and collect aromatic herbs, mint, spinach, parsley, rosemary, green barley, basil, origano, camomile, stevia, melissa and much more.

At Green Forage, exclusive importers of Bonino self loading forage wagons, we are extending our range of machines to include spice and aromatic herbs harvesters. These specialist harvesters are the result of the 40 years of experience the Italian manufacturer Bonino has accumulated in the field of cut and collect forage wagons.

In order to talk about the aromatic herb harvesters for spices, herbs and green leaf plants that Bonino produces, we need to start with a bit of geography. Bonino is located in Italy, more specifically in Piemonte, a beautiful region at the foot of the Alps on the French Italian border.

This is also the area where a big multinational sweet producer (Guess who? Answer at the bottom of the page) is based and mint coltivation has always been big business for local farmers. One day a local farmer saw one of the Bonino zero grazing forage wagons cutting grass and asked Mr. Bonino if he could modify one of his forage wagons to cut and collect mint.

The key factor here was to reduce to a minimum the bruising of the mint plant so as to reduce the loss of their precious essence. For the same reason the machine had to work in an offset position from the tractor.

Some mint growers were delivering mint to be processed and have its essence distilled. Other producers were delivering the mint to be utilized directly for human consumption. The former were more focused on having a “speedy” harvest, the latter focused only on having the leaves undamaged.

Thus were the first 2 (different) aromatic herb harvesters born: one with a sickle bar to cut and collect the mint whilst preserving its integrity as much as possible, and the other with a two disk mower system giving a much faster but slightly less refined cut.

The double disk mower harvester was then customized for lavender producers: this machine has the disks of the mower tilted to follow the profile of the lavender bushes and fits rakes instead of brushes on the front to better channel the lavender towards the cutting area of the harvester.

During the last 30 years Bonino has been supplying their aromatic herb harvesters to a wider and wider range of growers all over the world: mint, spinach, parsley, rosemary, green barley, basil, origano, camomile, stevia, melissa and more.

Every time a new enquiry comes in, it is very likely to be unique as each customer’s need are different. We, therefore, investigate each situation carefully and ultimately we deliver a customer-made version of one of the aromatic herb harvesters following this procedure: